Agony was a world, and Kaelen was its sole inhabitant. He knelt in the ruins of his own making, the ghost of Elara’s soul a screaming wound in his chest. The pack was a fractured mosaic of terror around him, their unified adoration shattered into a thousand shards of confusion and fear. Their new Luna, their Oracle, reeked of the Abyss, her stolen light gone, leaving only the stench of its source.
“It’s her!” Lyra’s voice was a shrill, desperate thing, tearing through the stunned silence. “Elara! Even in death, she seeks to poison you against me! This is her final curse!”
Her words, which a moment ago would have been scripture, now fell into a void. No one looked at her with belief. They looked at her with a dawning, sickening suspicion. The logic was simple, brutal, and undeniable: the
